Arpita Singh (b. 1937)

At first sight Arpita Singh's canvases might seem simplistic but her works are narrative and semi-autobiographical in nature. Her canvases depict family, friends and neighbors surrounded by everyday objects such as plants, fruit, cars and planes.  Frequently these symbols of the mundane are numbered and titled, superimposed on calendar-like grids or maps as if to impose order to a seemingly random composition. The works can be both humorous and disturbing at the same time, frequently depicting her own very personal vision of the role of the female in contemporary Indian society.  Arpita Singh began her professional life as a textile designer and this experience clearly influences the compositional structure of her canvases, but it is the careful combination of whimsical compositions, her bold use of colour and her confident control of her medium that reveals her extraordinary talent as a painter.

Journeys are important to the artist especially the memories of childhood journeys, particularly those tinged with doubt fear or grief.  Her journey as a child from Calcutta to Delhi shortly after her father's death has particular significance for her. 'Remembrances of it became subsumed in other journeys undertaken by individuals and groups.  Memories and mappings of dislocations and discoveries, of nostalgia and pain, of excitement and anxiety have surged through her images.  But Arpita Singh also responds to other dynamics in the world ...  In  fact, she absorbs the complexities of the world and represents them in her own distinctive way through the sensuous use of paint and brush, signalling joy, wonder, menace and melancholy in an intricate kaleidoscope of human emotions.' (Arpita Singh, Vadehra Art Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, New Delhi, 2006).

'Arpita Singh has pushed the visual lexicon of the middle-aged woman further than almost any other woman artist. The anomaly between the ageing body and the residue of desire, between the ordinary and the divine and the threat of the violent fluxes of the impinging external world gives her work its piquancy and edge. At the same time she critiques the miasma of urban Indian life with suggestive symbols of violence that impinge on the sphere of the private, creating an edgy uncertainty.' (Gayatri Sinha, www.grosvenorgallery.com, artist's bio-data).